


Sigma Octantis

by Twilit



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-29
Updated: 2016-07-29
Packaged: 2018-07-27 10:27:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7614538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Twilit/pseuds/Twilit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The sometimes-called South Star lacks the brightness and surety of position of its antipodal number. And yet it remains, dim and unsteady as it may be, a pinprick of fire in the endless dark, there for that voyager who needs it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sigma Octantis

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stiction](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stiction/gifts).
  * Inspired by [polaris](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3511598) by [stiction](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stiction/pseuds/stiction). 



You burned, once. In that immense emerald furnace called the Green Sun, you burned away. Drifting motes of memory flit through your mind from time to time, painful reminders of what burned and what was tempered. On the anvil of your quest bed, your mortality was shattered, scattered and offered up in sacrifice to your emergent divinity. It -you, your mortal soul- burned and while you rose from that pyre forged anew, the screaming, impersonally elemental pain was seared into your mind.

The Sun that seared was not alone in that property. Light had other effects, in the cruelly laughing manner of the game. Real, honest-to-God Sight cauterized your physical eyes almost immediately upon arising and the cavalcade of visions nearly drove you insane. But you coped; the Light was yours and you’d been driven insane before, by things tangential to the Sun and Skaia.

You have been cold, too.

* * *

They were not your gods, not in the worshipping sense. Perhaps in the usage. More than perhaps in the slipping, the wilfully clawing for the mantle of their power. You were very good at what you did, even as a mortal and so adhered to that maxim that vengeance was a dish best served cold. Too bad that They knew it too, held out that frigid lure, leveraging your moment of weakness. Through your frail and mortal form their icy tendrils could once again touch the real and wreak what havoc they could. 

(A vision: you stood the barest of chances of killing Jack. Like Vriska, the Light gave you that chance, but like her, you utterly failed to grasp it.)

The only cold that compared was that of your death. 

So you know a little bit about cold.

* * *

Sight took some getting getting used to, but now you can stumble your way through meteorite halls without holding pathetically to Dave’s cape. There’s a middle ground between acceptance and choice, you are finding. It is easy to achieve in the day-to-day, your path branching and solidifying in your mind. In the long term, in regards to your grand strategy, it is brain-achingly dizzying. Your goal, so distant, and your choices between innumerable. And that is before trying to overlay others’. The golden web spins and spins and spins until it almost looks like your symbol, a cruel mockery of your divinity.

You have to start small. What will Dave choose for today? Where will he be? Select the choice that brings you there. Find yourself in a dead-end hall, discarded cans the only sign of anyone presence. Try again, find yourself slowly turning in a transportalizer hall, growing confused at the branching paths that erupt from each of the unseen pads. Hold back tears when you accidentally run into him. Try again.

You have to learn to trust, a little. A sudden premonition and a hand flashes out to catch an overturned cup of coffee, your fingers going miraculously unscathed from the slopping dark liquid. A curling, cat-like smile to bolster your confidence. Hesitation at the _no good choices_ fallout of black and pale clashes between the clown, the krab and your fellow Seer. It all goes horribly, but turns out well. The best that you can manage is a hand to restrain Dave, a shake of your hooded head to warn Kanaya off.

A dim light, but it is the best you can manage.

You have to learn acceptance, as well.

* * *

It is acceptance that allows you to let the first of the visions past. She takes some comfort in her escapades into the void, into the coldness of space. You see her amongst the spinning, streaking stars, arms outstretched, sometimes in supplication, sometimes in benediction. Brief worry that she invites the Noble Circle in before you ascertain that it is space and the stars that she seeks.

(A vision: her head thrown back describes a perfect line of neck and throat, leading to parted, blackened lips. Stained fangs still flash as profane vapours rise in place of breath and stygian liquid leaks from golden eyes. Your heart quickens, pounding with desire in her fist, _in her fist as she squeezes you dry down her wide-open, gulping gullet_ -)

A tiny voice from your heart whispers, _I could be a star for you_ before you crush it, shaking your head at your presumption. Kanaya is a star unto herself, a winking diamond in the black abyss of this space. You are getting better at affixing your Sight to individuals, but cannot see intersections with your own. Whether this is due to a lack of will or ability is another question entirely and one that you are going to need more confidence to pursue.

So you accept her need to reach for her Aspect denied and keep your desires, sparked from your earliest pesterlogs, close to your chest. You watch, voyeuristically, as she takes comfort in the cold, in the vastness that once could have been hers. You watch the now and the near future, the ruining of dresses and the slow ischaemia of nerves and of feeling. 

There are futures in which she quietly passes into that endless, lonely night. Ones where she becomes the icy figurehead of your forlorn trans-sessional vessel, all draped in frost and icicles, left there in reverence and regret. But Kanaya does not choose these. She turns inwards, to herself and the passing, relative warmth of the meteor’s gray halls. Sometimes your vision ends there at the ladder and sometimes you follow her to her chambers where crinkling, cracking fabric is removed and your vision is desperately yanked back to your immediate surroundings. They why of those sometimes escapes you for a while.

And then you learn choice.

* * *

Fingers fused to ladder with just the barest traces of moisture left to it, remnants of too many passages along this way. The horrendous, too-quiet snap of frozen digits separating from a hand. The distant, impossibly calm horror that creeps along her face like a shudder in slow motion. 

The very instant this vision invades your mind you make your choice and are running through the halls. It continues in the searing certainty of Light as she regards her mutilated hand and considers her options. The cold seeps away and what drips from those stumps needs refilling. 

Your feet lift from the ground as a too-long tongue licks at lips in roiling, monstrous desire, a base hunger born of an animal need to survive. A born predator will not let its deformity stop it, nor will Kanaya give in to the despair of the deepest cold. But this path has too many branches that end in tragedy. A saffron streak describes your flight through the dusty corridors driven by your reaction to what comes thereafter. You will not let her drink from them.

You want her fangs in your flesh.

You want to be her reason to never return to that whirling, twinkling dark.

Then you flash through a transportalizer and it is a testament to her shock and dissociation that she does not notice the flare. Your eyes snap to hands and that is when you realize this was a vision of the future, not the now. You swallow, hard and think to duck back. But your future now, hazy as it is, is clear enough.

Or, at least, your heart is.

And so you choose.

* * *

“That was unwise.”

You are gathering yourself after that rude judgement, already berating yourself for that misstep when she slips, turning in the puddles and ice that follow her. Like reaching for a falling mug, your hand catches her wrist in a blink of unconscious movement.

Unlike the mug, she is void-cold and flinches, groans.

To your disbelief steam rises from your grasp and curls in the air from where you let go. She clutches, stiffly, at the spot, casting furtive glances at it while trying not to meet your gaze. There is no evidence of your burn, save her shedding, translucent frost; skin like diamond set alight is revealed, blossoming forth in the haze of your mind's eye. You suddenly feel very small, and very, very dim. 

A swallow.

"My apologies."

She is startled by your whispered words and tries to form words, but no breath leaves her lungs for a moment. Then,

“No,” she says, “I - I was just departing to my respiteblock for the remainder of the evening. I’m not... not feeling very well, exactly.”

Is she trying to put distance between you? Or is she asking for help? What Sight you have fails you utterly and you're left floundering with the radiant alien before you. Your earlier resolve threatens to crumble and leave you adrift, in need of rescue on this sea of hormones and deific responsibilities. Your lips press into a thin line then as you grasp that last bit, that safe harbour.

“I didn’t ask you along just to have you subjecting yourself to subzero temperatures for hours on end,” you murmur. It comes out more forcefully than you'd like, but to hell with it, you're committed now. You sink to the floor and make a circuit of the icen figure, careful not to wipe out on the slushy mess. 

"We need you living," you say, barely managing to withhold the "I." Because _yes, yes I do need you, living and brilliant and here._

Something like a laugh chokes out of her throat. “If you haven’t noticed, Rose - I’m already dead.”

The self-deprecation and self-dismissal is almost too much. There is no way that you are going to let this monument to survival and perseverance cast herself aside like this. You seize her wrist and let her feel what she is apparently trying to leave behind. The inhuman noise that hisses out of her mouth slithers down your back, your shiver hidden only by her own wracking shudder. Your bit lip goes unnoticed as golden eyes roll up. As the veil of steam fogs the air between you, you relent, a little bravely, and trace your fingers down unfamiliar anatomy to twine with delicate, clever fingers.

"Don't be ridiculous."

Kanaya slumps forward, panting, but her grip on your fingers is tight, needy even. Finding some daring still, you trace little circles on the backs of her hands with your thumbnails as you float back towards the transportalizer pad leading to her rooms. You do not break your grip and she gives no sign of wanting to either. She follows, willingly. 

The pair of you are ripped apart and re-assembled in the still-disturbing manner of transportalizers. Her rooms open up to you, bare things to your inner sight, save a riot of colour and clothing in a corner and writhing mass of anxious, nightmare-ridden covers that denote a human-style bed. You swallow and push away thoughts of ironing out that anxiety within those covers.

Instead you ask, "Do you have a bathtub in here?"

A long pause, heavy with meaning, stretches between you two. The trembling and shaking of her body has more to do with half-dead autonomic reflexes than fear, you can sense. But there is real fear, and it holds back a desire that dries your mouth, that thrums through her bones. You are about to prompt her, when you feel her nod in a direction. 

You lead Kanaya there, into the small room, careful not to touch her frozen, trembling body any more than necessary. In anticipation of the work before you, you let go to move your cowl back and she flinches from the sudden release. 

Her throat bobs in a hard gulp, and in another universe, a chill hand cups your face, setting it awash in chill mist. But here she doesn't, and merely takes your visage in.

"It's okay to stare," you say, and quirk your lips up in support of the lame statement. It's not so much a secret as a silly little insecurity. You are getting past it, as you grow in confidence and ability. You reckon your confidence will grow a bit more soon enough. 

“Can you…”

“Yes,” you nod, blinking slowly. “Don’t ask me to count how many fingers you hold up, though.”

“I won’t.”

It was another lame joke, and you are both such shaky ground that you feel the need to give that bolstering smile again.

“Hold out your hands again, please.”

Mechanically, she does, and you know that her eyes never leave yours, even as you blink deeply, willing your Sight to be true. Bright paths explode behind your lidded eyes and you dart up and down them, scouring the web for the best end to this encounter and what you find brings you up short. A heartbeat has passed, and to cover your hesitation, you stroke her knuckles again and nearly bring her to her knees.

"Take off your clothes."

It nearly does her in, the wracking shudder that shivers frost off her skin like a small blizzard. You clutch at her, steadying her, wanting her beyond the clinical future you have planned. You wish your Light would cast clearer directions.

"I won't look," you whisper shyly, and try a wink. Reluctantly, you let her go and reach past to get the water running into the tub. Tremblingly, she starts to strip and it takes a will you did not know you had to keep your attention on the water running through your hands. Crackling and crinkling denotes the broken fabric being divested, and wet slops it landing in slush. Another tear, a hitch in her breath and your head nearly whips around. 

A line of icy pain down her back, the fabric stuck to her skin. You wince, but move to help. She will endure, and heal. 

"Breathe in."

Your hands hover over icy shoulderblades. You can trace the line of her bones and musculature just from the sucking cold of the void that clings to her and the touch you want to bestow on her is so much more than the palms that press to her back. 

The noise that leaves her throat now is _filthy_ , a sordid counterpoint to the hissing of steam that rises from your gentle pressure. Dull, translucent frost peels away, revealing that pearlescent glimmer again and you bask in a Light greater than yours. The noise turns aching and pained and you whisper, over and over again,

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," as your heat penetrates to her shuddering, aching core. With a gentle pass of your hands applying soft pressure to thawing flesh, you separate the ruins of her shirt from her skin. The black material comes away with a bare, almost invisible layer of skin, not enough to bleed, but enough to cause a bright green weal to blossom up. You do not kiss it, as much as you want to. 

When the remains of her wardrobe fall away, you remove your hands, fighting down the urge to spread them, move them, explore alien parts and wring more noises from that arching throat.

"Can you get into the tub?" you ask. It takes a moment, and several false starts indicate no, her spasms are too severe. So you push her gently towards it, helping her in, one foot after another. When clawed toes pierce the warming water, you nearly lose your grip, her shudder is so great and the whimper so affecting. You wet drying lips and try to ignore the heat building within you, between your legs. Claws turn to foot, which turns to legs and eventually the whole of her elegant, beautiful frame lies within the tub.

You brush float slush aside and let her get used to the temperature, gently directing her into a recline. Jade tears flow freely, and your heart wrenches, but is glad. Better them than blood dripping from a ruined hand. 

Now, finally, the last part. "You need to be submerged."

You float up, one hand on the soft, so soft, skin of her shoulder, the other gracefully covering her eyes. A bare nod, and you push her, lower her under. 

Your knees skim the water, and it soaks into your pants a little. Belatedly, you realize the front of your tabard-like robe is completely sodden. Clumsy. 

You don't care.

Heat begins to rise from her shoulder, then sure enough her face. Light that you cannot truly see, but know is there anyways, suffuses the water and describes dancing patterns of light across the walls. You move the other hand to her other shoulder, setting the water lapping over the side, and she stares up at your from beneath the glowing waves. Long minutes pass.

Kanaya breathes out, letting the last of chill, unnecessary air bubble to the surface, releasing the last bit of the void into the steaming heat of this room.

You draw her up, feeling her horns breach the surface of the water, the dark strands of her hair plastering themselves to her face. She does not radiate heat, but nor does she burn where you touch her anymore either. 

"How's that?" you manage and it is like something breaks free inside her. A surge of water and flesh rises to meet you, lips to lips and your consciousness explodes into fireworks as she kisses you, hard and deep. It is your turn for noises and you go straight into a moan that get taloned fingers bunching in your shirt. As she pulls you into the warmth of the tub and that long, sinuous tongue finds your lips, your tongue, a revelation blooms in your thoughts. 

As much as you want to see her light, it is your _fire_ that she wants. No pinpricks spinning in the void, you. Your dim Light is of less import than the passion and life that spills from your core. Joy and reciprocal want erupts from your heart and you grind into Kanaya, pressing her into the tub. You can fill her vessel to bursting, even as you drink in her light.

For her, you burn again.


End file.
